Vatican evaluation of American seminaries planned three years ago in response to the clergy sex-abuse crisis is expected to move forward under Pope Benedict XVI and likely will tackle the polarizing issue of whether gays should become priests.
The appraisal will focus on conditions in the seminaries, including how instructors present church teaching on sexuality and celibacy, to look for anything that contributed to the scandal.
Church officials conducting the review will inevitably take up complaints that gays are enrolling in large numbers in the seminaries and their sexual activity is tolerated at the schools, experts on Catholicism said. Some Catholics say an atmosphere of sexual permissiveness - for heterosexual and gay seminarians - was a factor in the crisis, which has led to more than 11,000 abuse claims in the past five decades.
The Vatican education office also has been drafting new guidelines for accepting candidates for the priesthood that could address the question of whether gays should be admitted. The church considers gay relationships "intrinsically disordered."
The Rev. James Martin of the Jesuit magazine America says four Vatican sources had told him that, under John Paul, the Vatican was about to issue a decree placing severe restrictions or an outright ban on seminarians who acknowledge they are gay - even if they are celibate.
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